You Can't Go Home Again

This story is my effort to understand what it means to be Iranian in a time of intense anti-Muslim and anti-Iranian sentiment. I was born in Tehran in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war. Facing a failing economy and growing religious conservatism, my parents moved us across the world to Canada when I was a child. In some ways, it was like we never left: the US embassy hostage crisis and anti Muslim xenophobia dominated the headlines. We were labeled inherently violent, perpetually oppressed. Traumatic events in my former home and racist stereotypes in my current one made me ashamed of my Iranian identity. I returned to Iran in 2017 to piece together fragments of my past and to reconcile my present. This work is a partial memoir, detailing my personal journey back to Iran: what I found, what I lost, and what hopes I carry forward with me.